The Project Manager's Guide to Mastering Agile, 2nd Edition

31Non‐Software Case Studies

AGILE AND SCRUM ARE NOT LIMITED TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT; although that is where they are most commonly used. In general, Agile and Scrum can be used in any project that has some level of uncertainty; and in many areas, the principles behind Agile can be used without a formal Scrum approach. I will go through two examples of that in this chapter.

AGILE HOME REMODELING

The first project that I want to talk about is how I went about applying Agile principles to a home remodeling project of my own. I have been a Project Manager for a good portion of my career and I have managed projects of every shape and size you can imagine, including some large and complex multi‐million dollar projects but even though this project was not very large, it is one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever had to manage and it really required adapting Agile principles to fit this situation.

Background

Here’s some background on this project.

• We’ve owned this house for about 15–20 years but for most of that time it was a rental property that we had rented out to other people. It is only in the last year or two that we’ve been able to stop renting it and have it for our own use.
• Because it was a rental property, it only had the basic essentials and has never been significantly remodeled.
• My wife was not happy with it especially since immediately prior to this project some of the major appliances in the kitchen stopped working.
• We considered selling it and moving to a ...